If you ain’t from the South, you probably don’t get that particular reference; basically, it’s a classic desert combination. Two good things that are great together. I kind of felt that way after having lunch today with Dan Attis. Dan’s putting together a Sharepoint Saturday the week before SQLSaturday, and it was kind of nice to compare notes with somebody. We’re looking for ways we can build on that synergy for a future conference (and whatever little things we can do for the current ones).
Conferences
catching up…
I’m starting to fall back into a bad habit of not posting regularly; I’ve already missed a couple of weekly updates, and I haven’t shown off much coding lately. I wish I could blame it on a lack of time, but the truth is that I’m lazy. Even though I’ve been keeping busy, I still have plenty of free time. I’ve just been frittering it away on television. However, I’ve decided I’m going to take some advice from a fellow blogger: if you can’t keep a committment to two posts a week, commit to one. Henceforth, I’ll be posting at least one post a week on Wednesday nights.
Now that I’ve got that out of the way, here’s the breakdown of what’s been up with me since my last post:
- Judged a speech contest at the local community college,
- Started our latest sprint in the scrum method at work,
- Finished the sponsor letter for SQLSaturday,
- made several appeals for volunteers and speakers for SQLSaturday,
- finally took down my Christmas lights, and
- cleaned my home office.
I’m pooped just making the list. 🙂
AtlantaMDF meeting 2009-01-12
Wanted to drop a quick post wrapping up tonight’s usergroup meeting for AtlantaMDF. Tonight was the first chance I’ve had to pitch SQLSaturday #13 to a larger audience, and I got a lot of positive feedback. I had several people volunteer to help, and even had two or three people volunteer to present (not including those who were interested in presenting in my two super-short sessions). I’m hoping this is going to be killer; I’ve got a lot of legwork to do to get sponsors lined up, but we’re on our way!
There were a lot of new faces tonight; the cynical side of me wants to point to the economy. A lot of people are either looking for work, or want to make sure that they still have work in the next year. User groups provide both free education, and free contacts, and you can’t fault someone for doing what they can to improve themselves and make sure that their opportunites are lined up. However, I think a lot of people are finally starting to realize that SQL Server is a great platform for database development, and the best way they can learn about the technology is to participate in the user group.
Tonight, Eric Melcher of Intellinet gave a great presentation on End-To-End BI. If you weren’t there, you may want to download it from the AtlantaMDF site when he publishes it; I think the title was a little misleading, but the content was great. Eric really focused on the client tools available for analysis, including everything from Excel to Performance Point, touching on Excel Web Services, Proclarity, and Reporting Services along the way. If you’re like me, and you feel overwhelmed by what BI is, and what options are available to display data, this was a great presentation to get your feet wet.
SQL Saturday #13 Call for Speakers NOW OPEN!
We just opened up the call for speakers for the first Atlanta SQL Saturday. This is becoming more real by the minute 🙂
If you’re in the Atlanta Area, and would be willing to help out, please check out our event page for details. Nutshell: it’s being held at the Microsoft offices in Alpharetta on April 25, 2009. All details are subject to change, but that’s where we’re at for now.
We’re committed now!
Tonight, during the AtlantaMDF planning session, I finally took the bait and committed to planning a SQL Saturday. I’ve been thinking about it for a while, but was delaying until I got more information about the other user group experience in the region (Code Camp). I finally got word that they’ve picked a date (mid March), so we can begin moving forward with our plans.
I’m a big proponent of the code camp model, so I’m looking forward to helping set the wheels in motion; however, I’m a little worried that I’m in over my head. I’m probably going to be blogging about this a lot over the next few weeks (months), so be prepared. Here’s my short list of stuff to do:
- Contact Andy Warren to officially say we’re doing this.
- Report back with some tentative dates to the rest of the AtlantaMDF leadership team.
- Start identifying vendors, volunteers, and speakers.
Our local Microsoft rep has suggested that we could use the Microsoft office if we limited the number of attendees, which is reasonable. That’s a big chunk of time time that we can save. Looks like this is really happening; exciting times ahead.